Links for today’s chat with Jim Mora on Critical Mass:
The 100 year march of technology at The Atlantic.
The graph showing the adoption of technology is fascinating, not least because it shows that households were slower to adopt things like washing machines which made domestic chores easier than those which entertained, like radios.
Three must-have travel languages at Daisann McLean’s Real travel.
She chose Cantonese:
. . . Harder and more beautiful and complex than Mandarin, full of sass and splendor. It’s got everything you want in a language. Great food culture. Terrific vocabulary of insults. And the best thing of all: no hierarchy of class or gender built into the grammar.
The vocabulary of insults probably isn’t the best reason for choosing a language. But it can be fun to deliver an insult in another language in such a way that the listener thinks you’re delivering a compliment – though it pays to be quite sure they don’t understand what you’re saying.
My rusty Spanish has only a couple of insults – one of which is pajero which shows why people who name vehicles ought to check with speakers of other languages.